Early Cluster Bomb: Molotov’s Bread Basket (Jul, 1940)
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Jul, 1940
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Big Russian Bomb Holds Sixty Little Ones
Whirling down from the sky, a gigantic aerial bomb employed by Russian aircraft breaks open before it strikes the ground, to release and spread a deadly cargo of small incendiary bombs over a wide area. Nicknamed “Molotov’s bread basket,” after Viacheslav M. Molotov, Russian Commissar for Foreign Affairs, the mammoth bomb is seven and a half feet long and over two feet in diameter. Vanes at its tail cause it to whirl when released from the rack of a bombing plane. This action ultimately opens the steel sides, allowing sixty small incendiary bombs within it to hurtle outward in all directions and plummet earthward to set fire to any inflammable object on the ground within a broad circle. First used in actual warfare against Finland, the bomb was employed to set fire to towns whose houses were constructed of wood.
Hmm, the first cluster bombs. Interesting.
Comment by repsac — October 19, 2007 @ 9:40 am
They didn’t *patent* it in US court? Oh, that wouldn’t help, and explains why some of these oddly unheard of military breakthroughs are thought by readers today to have bombed. But instead, they were CLASSIFIED out of existence, and used in various wars!
Comment by NikFromNYC — January 12, 2008 @ 3:28 pm
[...] a reference image here. Early Cluster Bomb: Molotov’s Bread Basket Put the reference image on a plane in the BG. Started with a cylinder, modeled from there. [...]
Pingback by SMC #50 - September 07 - September 14 - Explosives - Page 3 - Game Artist Forums — September 12, 2008 @ 11:09 am
Random historical note: “Molotov’s bread basket” is a Finnish nickname invented after the man went and claimed that Soviet bombing runs were actually drops of food aid.
Finns went on to name their mass-produced incendiaries “Molotov cocktails” as a drink to go with the food.
Comment by Kizor — March 1, 2009 @ 9:56 am